Ambulance 'not on the radar' for sick child

A Balwyn woman says her granddaughter had to be driven to hospital with a fractured skull when Ambulance Victoria could not tell them when they could send an ambulance.

The woman, Barbara, told ABC local radio a heavy table fell on her granddaughter on Monday night.

She was vomiting blood and in severe pain. They called an ambulance and, after waiting 25 minutes, they called again.

"He said he had no idea when it would come," she said.

"He kept being, I thought, a little patronising, telling me I know this must be very difficult. And he said you're not actually on the radar at this stage for your area.

"She was vomiting profusely. She was very very sick," she said.

She says her husband and daughter drove the child first to Box Hill Hospital and then to the Children's Hospital where she was taken in for immediate treatment.

Babara says the child was diagnosed as having a fractured skull.

"If this is the service we're given, something needs to be seriously done or lives may be lost," she said.

Steve McGhie, the secretary of Ambulance Employees Australia, says it is, unfortunately, an example of the problems caused by the increasing workload for paramedics, which is growing at 6 per cent per year.

"Resources are not growing at that same level. The population is getting older, the system is under pressure," he said.

"Unless we keep pace with growth, the gaps will get wider and wider and the delays will become longer and longer," he said.

Simon Thompson a regional manager with Ambulance Victoria says the ambulance call taker was not told the child had been vomiting blood.

"If that information was there I would imagine that it should have increased the priority of the case," he said.

"It was categorised as an urgent case but not time-critical, so not a lights and sirens case.

"We were very busy at the time and obviously we would have allocated the first available ambulance that we had based on the other cases that we had in the local area."